“I Do” [ft. SZA]

Packed to the brim with provocative one-liners and features from music’s heaviest hitters (Chance the Rapper, J. Balvin, and Migos, to name a few), Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy is a package of lyrical TNT designed to burn up the charts. No song brings as much unmerciful heat as “I Do,” a swaggering duet with fellow boundary-breaker SZA about leaving men on read. “I do what I like, I do, I do,” SZA coos, floating freely into higher registers as if she refuses to be tied down. Indeed, pushing against hip-hop’s glass ceiling has been a theme in both women’s careers, which is one reason this pairing has such impact. Another reason is, simply, they sound good together. Passing the ball back and forth like they’ve done this a hundred times, they hold strong to their distinct positions—SZA sliding sweetly through the Auto-Tuned chorus, setting up Cardi to punch each verse—and come on like a hip-hop dream team. These are two gutsy women beating the system and not backing down.

Triumphant, leisurely, and terrifically dismissive, the song is a told-you-so anthem pointed squarely at Cardi’s players and haters. Over sinister synths from Murda Beatz that flicker like melting candles, she cheekily retraces her steps from stripper to superstar with magnificent bluster: “They said by now that I’ll be finished, hard to tell/My little fifteen minutes lasted long as hell, huh?” That Cardi not only embraced but shaped her Cinderella narrative fueled her astronomical and steady rise. Perhaps that’s why there’s something slyly feminist about the way she spits her B’s; every “boss,” “bad,” and “bitch” goes pop-pop-pop like little bullets. Much like her delivery on “Bodak Yellow” (“Said, ‘little bitch!’”), and like Rihanna before her, the sheer force with which she leans into the consonants on “I Do” seems to masterfully flip the image, recasting “bad bitch” as a title women want to own (“I’m a rich bitch and I smell like it/I’m in a boss bitch mood, ay”). More than anything, this is a song about reclaiming power. As such, it feels worth noting that unlike many of her male colleagues, she doesn’t slip into beef or barely-veiled name-calling. Instead, “I Do,” with its decidedly empowered title, finds the duo defining themselves on their own terms. “I’m a gangsta in a dress/I’m a bully in the bed,” Cardi roars. “Only time that I’m a lady’s when I lay these hoes to rest.” For two artists deftly reshaping what it means to be a woman in hip-hop, these are words to live by.